Cosmopolitan aura

I attended Korean language classes for about four months and also participated in the fellowship of Korean Press Foundation (KPF). My stay in South Korea remained highly fruitful. I experienced a cosmopolitan aura as the program served as a platform of interactions among participants having diverse nationalities and cultural backgrounds. I learnt Korean language to some extent, made Kimchi, relished Korean food and music, visited many cultural sites and watched the World Cup 2006 on a big television screen displayed in the open with thousands of Korean soccer fans. I then came to know how crazy Koreans are about football games!

At one occasion, I enjoyed Indonesian, Cambodian, and the Philippines dishes prepared by my chef friends from these countries. There came a time when I had to walk down a ramp with a Vietnamese female fellow, wearing my national dress – daura, suruwal and topi. It was really a strange experience for a shy guy like me. These activities aimed at nurturing friendship and cooperation among the fellows. The interactive activities attest the fact that culture plays an enabling role to foster mutual and harmonious bond. I proudly tell my friends that I could write down around two pages in Korean language. At the farewell program organised inside of KPF building, I had read out a speech that I wrote in Korean language with the help of Korean friends. Alas! Today I can’t write in Korean language in lack of practice.

Another impression that I collected is that Korea wants to promote two-way interactions among the cultures of different nations. Under the Cultural Partnership Initiative (CPI), the participants, who came from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America did not only get familiarised with the culture of Korea but they had also an opportunity to present their own skill, talent, dress, music, food and cultural norms in the host country. They were able to enhance their ability to design and implement cultural projects and build global partnerships, thereby contributing to expanding the cultural industry across the globe. This is indeed a unique feature of the CPI.

Here I would like to quote Lee Soo-Myoung, who was Deputy Director at the Cultural Policy Division under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, South Korea in 2006. He said: “The ACPI is an interactive cultural exchange project, in which people from Asian countries will experience Korean culture and introduce their own cultures to Koreans.” I have included his remark in my news report entitled ‘‘South Korea for Cultural Ties with Asian Countries”. In view of growing conflicts, wars and political polarisation, South Korea’s initiative to maintain harmony and bonhomie through the cultural exchanges is praiseworthy and deserves to be replicated in other countries.

During my six-month stay in Korea, I had published at least nine exclusive reports on diverse issues of Korea in my newspaper, The Rising Nepal, the oldest English daily of Nepal. The topics of the news reports included culture, civil society movement, economy, politics, media reforms, job market, labour quotas for foreign workers, Red Devils (the soccer fans of South Korea) and Nepal-South Korea relations.

Here I would like to mention an interview with former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung. It was my lifetime experience. After sending proposal to the Kim Dae Jung Foundation, former South Korean president and Nobel laureate granted an interview to two journalists from Nepal and Pakistan. It featured South Korea-North Korea ties, his democratic struggles and Nepal’s democratic movement. I received a good feedback from my friends and readers after his interview was published in my newspaper.

I have another memorable moment. While staying in Korea, I had studied some books from the library of Korean University on recent Korean history and war, political movements and, more importantly, its economic feat and mesmerising modernisation. Besides, I solicited the opinions of Korean professors, experts and students to have a nuanced understanding of miracles of Han River. Then, I jotted down a working paper entitled ‘A Rise of Phoenix from Ashes of Wars’ which was presented at a seminar attended by the KPF officials as well as fellows from different countries.